A sex for grades short story (male version)
TRIGGER WARNING: This content contains explicit contents and graphic depictions of abuse. Reader discretion is advised.
There is psychopath. There is madman. There is babalawo. And there is Dr Anita Ubong.
The Dr in her name was not for PhD in Psychology, it was for PhD in madness. The madness that drove you to a psychiatric hospital and death bed. And I was getting close to my death bed.
In fact, I was lying on it now. Next to Dr Anita. She was breathing heavily next to me after I finished giving her a third round of what I call ‘sex for module exchange’.
“Dr Anita,” I sat up and looked at her, “its time you approve my withdrawal for Psychology of Human Sexuality. It’s been two weeks now.”
“When you do better, I will approve it.” She said like she did the last time, and the time before, and the other time before, and the other other time before. And the one other zillion times I asked her to approve it.
I swear, this was the height of it. Three rounds in one night and you dare say when I do better?
Do you know what?
“Ma, I’m not doing this again. This has to stop!” I stood up in frustration, “If you don’t let me change your course, I will report you to the school authorities.”
And I was dead serious this time. I didn’t care who found out about me and Dr Anita’s sexual encounters anymore.
She didn’t look moved, “And what will you tell them?”
I was not ready for the words to come out of my mouth. It was hard. It sounded stupid. It really did. And I didn’t want to make Dr Anita feel bad, even though she didn’t deserve my mercy. But I had to let it all out.
“That- that you forced me.”
Dr Anita let out a loud laugh that the bed began to shake. She looked at me like that was the stupidest thing she has ever heard.
“And you think they will believe that?” She sat up and looked straight into my eyes, “If both of us make a report about who got raped between us, who do you think they’re going to believe more?”
Did she- was she trying to flip the table on me now?
Wait, I scoffed. She wants to make me the rapist now? This woman is crazy.
I picked up my shirt angrily. “You’re not going to win this time, ma. Wallahi I am not going to let you get away.”
I packed my other stuffs from the floor and dressed up while Dr Anita just lay in bed, giving me that ugly wry smile she kept giving me these past two weeks.
As I was about to leave the door, she called out to me from the bed.
“Mr Mohammed,” She said, but I refused to look back at her, “make sure you give your fellow prisoners orgasm too. The men will appreciate it more.”
With that, I slammed the door of the motel room and threw my bag on the floor outside the door. I began punching the walls until my hands started bleeding. I swear, if nobody kills this woman, I will. Even if I miss Jannah (heaven) for this, I’ve had enough of this woman’s scam.
****
I blamed myself. I blamed myself for letting Dr Anita take advantage of me by using her module as an excuse to sleep with me. I blamed myself for thinking it was only going to last for a short while. I blamed myself for thinking it wasn’t going to be a big deal since I was already having casual sex with other girls. And now-
And now….
There was a loud siren noise outside my hostel in school. Students were gathered in front of our hostel and I saw a police car parked in front of the building.
I was just returning from that horrible ordeal with Dr Anita when I began to hear my name from the whispers of the boys that stood outside the hostel.
“That’s him!” I heard one of the 300 level guys say to a policeman while pointing to my direction.
Before I could move any further, I was blocked by a group of guys while one of the policemen came towards me.
“Isah Mohammed?” The policeman asked me.
“Yes, what is going on?” I frowned. He rose his handcuff to my face, “You are arrested for the rape of senior lecturer Mrs Anita Ubong on the night of 19th September.”
My mouth opened. That was the night of the Fresher’s Welcome Party. The night that she raped me.
“Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law.” He added while he forced the handcuff around my wrists from behind.
I couldn’t say a word. I was speechless. How could I try to convince all these people that it was Dr Anita who forced herself on me, and not me on her. Allah, what do I do?
Wallahi that woman was fast. She didn’t let me have a single night’s sleep before she could go on with her plan.
The policemen dragged me into their car. I couldn’t look around at the eyes of the boys that stood there watching me. I was ashamed, confused and very very angry.
As I was being pushed inside the car, my eyes caught my roommates, Nnamdi and Emmanuel, watching me from the room window. They were the only ones who knew the truth. But with everything that was already happening to me, would they want to join me inside the lion’s den too?
****
All through the night, the policemen interrogated me at the police station. Actually, they tortured my life.
I barely got a word out of my mouth before they began slapping and kicking me. They wanted to get a confession out of my mouth. To tell them that I raped Dr Anita. They did not even want to hear my side of the story. They were already convinced that I had already done the act, case closed.
They wanted me to also confess that I was a cultist, which I clearly wasn’t. The more I refused, the more they beat me up. They stripped me off my clothes and tied me and hit me until I could no longer fight back.
I slept the whole night on the cold floor and starved like a homeless rat.
The next morning, the policemen returned my clothes and brought me back to the interrogation room. This time, it wasn’t the policemen there, it was the witch herself.
I sat across from her and refused to look at her filthy eyes. I knew she was happy seeing me in this brutal state.
“Are you satisfied?” I asked Dr Anita.
“No. But I’ve told the officers to pardon you.” She stretched her face close to my side and whispered, “But if you ever tell anyone that I was the one who forced you, even maggots will not be able to eat your decomposed body.”
I scoffed, “You’re very poetic, ma. You should have been a writer.”
She eyed me and stood up from her seat, “I’ve given you my last warning.”
She walked out of the interrogation room. I was dragged outside by a policeman and as we walked down the hallway behind Dr Anita, my eyes caught her slipping a ward of cash into one of the policemen’s hand. As expected.
As I got to the reception of the police station, I found my mother and younger sister, Amina, waiting for me there. They looked distressed. My mother began asking me one million questions at the same time. She could not believe that her very own honourable son would touch a woman, talkless of raping one. Mama, you were right. You were very very right. I would never do such a thing to any soul.
My mother got so weary that she broke down in tears in front of me. She told me to follow them home and leave Ivory University for good. That I was a disgrace and there was nothing I could do to gain my reputation back.
And it didn’t take too long to realize that she was right. Because I, Isah Mohammed, have ruined my family’s name. And my life, for good.
****
I returned home. I didn’t know how to fight anymore. This battle was not for me, it belonged to Allah.
I wasn’t expelled. I just sort of drop out, because I knew going back to that school would be a living nightmare. I knew how society treated men who were accused of rape. Even if you didn’t do it, you would fall under the trap of being guilty for calling a woman a liar. There was no way out of this.
I had to stay low for a while. Or for the rest of my life. Because this new-found humiliating fate I had come to was not worth living for.
I wanted to die but I didn’t want to die. I wanted to kill myself because I couldn’t bare the pain anymore. But I didn’t want to die because killing myself would only prove to them that I was guilty of what I was being accused of. I was so lost. I was so confused.
Most days, I could barely sleep. I kept feeling like someone would break into my room and stab me in the chest.
Until one unexpected evening, Nnamdi paid a visit to my house. How he found my address, I don’t know.
“Mallam,” He said to me, “they killed Emmanuel.”
My body froze that very moment. Emmanuel? Like, the Emmanuel that was the only witness and also a victim of Dr Anita?
“He tried defending you and telling everybody in school that Dr Anita took advantage of you and him. But the students went crazy and ambushed him. That is why I came here, to warn you not to return to school. They will kill you too.”
“I don’t understand. You mean, the students at Ivory University ambushed him?” I asked, still not believing my ears.
“The school is not as glamorous as you think it is. You’ve not stayed long enough to know the monsters living inside that campus.”
I looked away in disbelief. And the more Nnamdi kept talking, the more I could feel my body shake in fear. I could feel every bit of me shaking as I stared at the ground in front of me. Soon, I could not hear anything Nnamdi was saying anymore. I lost focus… and control.
“Are you okay? Mallam-”
“Get out!” I snapped at Nnamdi. He was confused and was about to say something, but I stood up and shouted, “Leave! Nnamdi, go!”
I kicked Nnamdi out of the house. I was too furious to look at him for another second. I ran to my room and locked all the doors and windows. I didn’t want any breathing human being near me again. I was tired of everybody’s existence. The world was a mad place. Maybe I was dead and I was already in Jahannam (hell fire) but I just wasn’t aware yet. How could God allow me to live in a cruel world like this.
I forced myself to sleep and begged Allah to wake me up in Jannah. But I woke up to something unexpected. Dr Anita in my house.
My room door was wide open and I walked into the parlour to see her sitting where Nnamdi sat yesterday. She was giving me that evil wry smile.
“Mr Mohammed, If Mohammed doesn’t go to the river, the river would come to Mohammed.” I heard her say.
I turned around and ran back to my room. Dr Anita was chasing me but I was quick to slam the door in her face.
As I curled up on my bed and covered my whole self while shaking under the duvet, I heard noises around me. The noise of a crowd surrounded in my room. My bed began shaking as some bodies climbed on top of it. I was too scared to remove the duvet from my face, despite I was sweating heavily.
A hand grabbed the duvet from my face and pulled it away from me. I saw a crowd of familiar faces from Ivory University standing over me. They were my classmates at school.
They were all angry and shouting. Some spat on me, some kept punching and stamping me with their foot as they shouted, “Rapist! Burn in hell! You deserve to die!”
There was a loud iron-scratching noise at the corner of my bedroom. Everyone stopped hitting me and shifted for this single noise maker to come through. It was Nnamdi. I saw him standing over me with a large cutlass in his hand.
He raised the cutlass up and gave me an evil grin, “O-Lord, make sure you give the demons in hell orgasm too.”
With that he brought down the cutlass to my face and I screamed.
My scream caused everyone to disappear. The place became silent for a second until I saw rays of sunlight flashing through my fingers. I opened my eyes to see I was outside, in a public place.
I sat up and looked around the familiar surroundings. I was in a mosque. The one my father and I attended every Friday. The one my father was kicked out from last week for having a rapist of a son.
I heard sounds of whipping behind me. I turned around to see a group of men gathered at a spot.
I went to join them, only to see my old father being tied to a tree, receiving haddi lashing. The imam and the men around kept chanting at how he deserved it for being the father of a rapist.
“Baba!” I shouted.
I went to stop them from beating my father but instead, they threw me to the ground and started flogging me too.
“I didn’t do it! I swear, I didn’t do it!” I screamed in between the floggings, “I didn’t rape her! I swear!”
Someone grabbed my throat from behind with a whip. I struggled to breathe and shut my eyes. The whip around my neck kept getting bigger and bigger and by the time I opened my eyes, I found that the whip had grown into a hand, a hand choking me from behind.
I glanced around to find myself lying flat in a prison cell, my body facing the gate of the cell. I didn’t understand what was going on behind me but I felt something hard entering my anus from behind, which caused me a lot of pain.
I moved my head but the choking around my neck got tighter and the pain in my anus kept increasing. It didn’t take long for me to realize I was getting raped by a man in a prison cell.
I heard the prisoner’s deep voice behind me saying, “You rape a woman, we rape you too.”, followed by the laughter of other prisoners in the cell.
I cried for them to stop. And kept telling them, “I did not do it! She did it to me!”
I kept screaming and telling them to stop. The room kept spinning. The more I screamed, the faster the room kept spinning.
It kept spinning and spinning until, I heard a familiar voice shouting, “Isah! Isah! Wake up!”
The spinning stopped and my eyes snapped wide open like a possessed man.
“Isah?” The familiar voice called my name again, “Can you hear me? Can you hear me?”
I turned to the side to see imam Bello, the imam at our mosque, sitting next to me. He was holding me in his arms like I was about to fall. I was squeezing his shirt without realizing it.
I looked around to see Mama, Baba and Amina staring at me in worry. They all stood beside the mat I was lying on. I was in an unfamiliar place, probably the imam’s house.
My mother was crying all through and her cry worsened when my eyes met hers.
“What happened?” I asked them, “Where am I?”
Nobody said anything, they all glanced at each other. Amina rushed to bring water to my side while the imam gave praises to Allah for His goodness. I still did not understand what was going on.
“You scared us, Isah. We thought you were possessed by Jinn (demon).” Amina said while handing the cup to me, “You ran out of the room and started screaming and saying some strange things.”
“I don’t understand.” I said, staring at imam Bello’s room, “Why am I here?”
“You were having strange nightmares for the past two days.” She responded again. “You were going crazy, Isah. Imam had to pray for you.”
I stared at her in relief. I wanted to cry. Despite all the crazy things she just said, I was so relieved. Relieved to know that everything that just happened, from Dr Anita coming to my house down to the prison rape, was a dream.
But, the thought of Emmanuel’s death caused me pain once again. I knew that one was real.
“Isah.” Baba called me.
“Sir?” I looked at him standing in the corner.
“What do you mean by ‘you didn’t do it’ and ‘she did it to me’?”
They heard everything. They heard my screams from the nightmares.
I stared at Mama who was still crying and refusing to look at me.
I wanted to say something. But how could I? How could I tell my father, the number one responsibility of me being a man, that I was raped a woman.
“Nothing, sir.” I mumbled.
If Baba could cuss, he would do it right now. His facial expression could say it all that he didn’t believe me. There was nothing my father hated more than lies.
He marched closer to my side, “Isah, Wallahi tallahi if you dare lie to me-”
“She slept with me, Baba! She is the one who forced herself on me, not me on her!” I shouted before he could slap me. If he was going to slap me.
“She raped you.” Imam Bello said plainly, emphasizing the second one loud and clear. “abi?”
I refused to answer him. I was so ashamed that I buried my face. I couldn’t look into Baba’s eyes.
Next thing I knew, I heard the door slam shut. My father stomped out of the room. I had failed. I had failed him as a son, as a man.
I was on the brink of tears, but I held it back. There was no way I was going to let Mama and Amina see me cry. I was their next protector and showing them this ugly side of me was too much of a burden to bear.
Later that evening, Baba called us downstairs to return home. Mama and Amina left me alone with the imam to have any last words with him. But I didn’t have anything left to say. All I wanted to do was lock myself in my room again.
As I stepped out of his room, imam Bello placed his hands on my shoulder and said warmly, “Allah sees all and hears all. You are not alone, Isah.”
I took his hand in appreciation of his words and left him there.
Baba drove us back home in his car. As we were on our way, he took an unfamiliar route and before we knew it, we were in front of a police station.
“Mai gida, what are you doing?” Mama finally spoke as she looked at my father in confusion.
He ignored her and told only me to get down from the car to follow him inside. Walking into the police station gave me PTSD. I could not help but think about the torture I received from the policemen the last time I was in a police station.
But Baba didn’t bring me here to be tortured again. Instead, I was brought in for questioning, not as a suspect but as a victim.
All through the time I narrated the car incident and the false accusation to the police, I was in disbelief that this was really happening. I kept glancing back at Baba every 10 seconds to see his reaction, but he sat still and listened attentively. I wish I could hug my father at that moment, but that would be… very awkward.
After my report in the police station, with Baba on my side, I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. I didn’t feel as trapped as I was. But I knew the story wasn’t going to end there. Facing Dr Anita was the bigger issue.
The following months were the court trials against Dr Anita. I didn’t appear in court all the time, so I didn’t get to face the dreading face of that witch every time. Except, the one time I was in court for questioning as a witness. And the other time Nnamdi appeared to give hearsay evidence of what Emmanuel had told us about me not being the only victim of Dr Anita.
After months of delay upon delay in the court, the ruling came.
Dr Anita was not guilty of rape, because there was not enough evidence and there was no law in Nigeria that convicts women of rape. According to our law, it was impossible for a woman to rape.
I was furious at the verdict. The worst part was that the issue of the false rape accusation against me was struck out during the first trial.
And so, Dr Anita was a free woman.
I broke down in tears for weeks. All my hope had turned to despair once again. I could not eat nor sleep. It was like nothing changed after everything Baba did for me at the police station.
Though there were some good days, there were many bad days. I still got insults from the streets and was called names for being abused by a woman. Baba made sure I did not let these people bring me down. And because of this very support from my father, nothing else seemed to matter. I turned down the volume of the outside noise in my head and increased the volume of my father’s words.
Like they say, it takes one moment for your life to fall apart but it also takes few little moments to rebuild it.
And one of those moments was here.
“Ya Isah, some people are here to see you.” Amina said to me one day after I had finished praying.
Confused, I walked into the parlour to see Nnamdi and a short boy with glasses. Nnamdi gave me a long embrace when he saw me, I tried to push him off but he made it loud and clear that receiving long hugs from your fellow man doesn’t make you gay.
The short guy introduced himself as Wole. He was a 300 level Mass Communication student at Ivory University.
“Isah, come with us.” Wole said, “We would like to show you something.”
And that was how I found myself back at Ivory University. This time, I didn’t jump inside the pearl gates with my hands in the air.
Nnamdi and Wole took me to the Computer Science department on campus. They took me to a basement that no one else knew about but them. Under the basement was a door that looked like a wall. The door opened and we walked into a room full of computers and boys in matching white masks sitting behind computer desks.
“Welcome to the Pirates.” Wole introduced, “The first and only secret fraternity in Ivory University.”
I stared at the guys in matching masks sitting in front of computer screens, “So, you’re like a secret cult with no weapons?”
“Actually, we’re a secret cult with the greatest weapon, our keyboards.” He teased while sitting on a computer desk, “There is nothing more dangerous than the truth on screen.”
I nodded my head in amusement and stopped to look at him, “So, you’re like the 21st Century Wole Soyinka, abi?”
He chuckled and shook his head, “I’ve heard that joke a million times.”
I chuckled and just walked around the room to watch this fascinating fraternity in action. I stopped to stand behind one of the masked guy’s computer desk and stared at what he was working on.
A blog. It was called The Invisible Man.
“The Invisible Man.” Wole read out the words from the screen as he stood next to me, “Our blog lets boys and men from different universities share their story anonymously, just like yours. We share what nobody sees or believes about us. And do you know the best part? We find out that we’re not any different from each other.”
“But nobody has gone through what I went through.”
“Emmanuel Ololade.” He called my late roommate’s name, causing me to freeze. “David Amaechi. Kabir Ibrahim. Prince Okpara. Tunde Balogun. Uduak Akpan. Jonathan James. Moses Nwadike. Hassan Mohammed. Farouk Babagana. Bolaji Bankole. Bassey Edwards. Chidi Igwe. Godswill Ubong. And…” He looked at me, “Isah Mohammed.”
I stared back at him as he called my name last.
He added, “These are the boys that have been abused by Dr Anita Ubong. These are the brightest boys in all of Dr Anita’s classes. Your stories might not be the exact same, but its connected.”
I sat down on one of the nearest seats close to me. I was speechless. I did not understand how Dr Anita was able to take advantage of these many boys and still not end up in jail, or fired as a professor.
“Isah, you’re the first to ever take Dr Anita to court. Nobody has been bold enough to do it.” Wole said, “That is why the Pirates need you. And, the Pirates will protect you. If the law does not protect us, let us protect ourselves.”
“So, what do you want me to do?” I folded my arms. If we were going to protect each other, I needed to start from somewhere.
Wole brought the nearest keyboard closer to me.
“Tell your story.” He said, “And set many men free. But most importantly, set yourself free, Isah Mohammed.”
——— THE END ———-
“I come as one, but I stand as 10,000”
– Maya Angelou
DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. All characters, locations, organizations and incidents appearing in this article are fictitious.
A/N: Thank you so much for reading this two-part series of My Sapiosexual Lecturer. How did you find it? Would love to hear your comments below. And don’t forget to share the story with your friends and families.